Experience has taught Dempster to take hard times in stride

Monday

Jun 3, 2013 at 12:34 PM

BOSTON — Ryan Dempster isn’t too worried about the severe downturn the quality of his pitching has taken in his last four starts. A pitcher who had a 2.93 ERA through his first seven starts has a 7.78 ERA in his last four.

Brian MacPherson Journal Sports Writer brianmacp

BOSTON — Ryan Dempster isn’t too worried about the severe downturn the quality of his pitching has taken in his last four starts. A pitcher who had a 2.93 ERA through his first seven starts has a 7.78 ERA in his last four. He’s walked 14 hitters in his last 19 2/3 innings.

But when Dempster takes the mound on Tuesday at Fenway Park, he’ll do so with the same matter-of-fact confidence he’s had all season long — and throughout his career.

“I’ve been doing this long enough where you’re going to hit some bumps in the road, and you’re going to have some stretches where you pitch really great,” he said after his last start.

Dempster has pitched in the major leagues for 16 seasons. His unwavering confidence in himself dates back to the second of those seasons when he was playing for the Florida Marlins under John Boles — the father of Kevin Boles, now the manager at Double-A Portland in the Red Sox farm system.

“No disrespect to any other manager I’ve ever had, but I never had a manager show that much confidence in me in my career,” Dempster said.

“My father has always had a presence about him,” Kevin Boles said. “A lot of people say he’s very intimidating. I know that Mark Kotsay, the first time he met him, he said he called up his father and said, ‘This is the most intimidating guy I’ve ever met. He’s 5-foot-5, and he’s the most intimidating guy I’ve ever met in my life.’

“But my father was very fair. He was completely honest with guys. He told them their situations, and he put them in an environment where they could succeed, where they could just work on a few certain things and then watch them grow.”

John Boles was the Marlins’ farm director for eight seasons, including the two-plus years Dempster pitched in the Marlins system after coming over in a trade from Texas. He took over as manager at the start of the 1999 season after Jim Leyland resigned.

Dempster had pitched more than 50 innings for Leyland in 1998. He’d compiled an ERA of 7.08.

“Oh, my God, I was terrible,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been in the big leagues.”

A 22-year-old Dempster didn’t start the next year in the big leagues. He pitched at Triple-A Calgary until the middle of May. But what John Boles saw in Dempster all along was a pitcher capable of pitching in the major leagues.

“He had the stuff to be a major-league pitcher,” Boles said. “He had a fastball, slider and a changeup. His slider was really an outstanding pitch. … We had all those young guns — the [A.J.] Burnetts, the [Josh] Becketts and the [Brad] Pennys — and he fit right in.”

Dempster had a 4.71 ERA in 25 starts for Boles and the Marlins in that 1999 season. But pitching as he was on a team that was going nowhere fast — Florida lost 98 games in front of empty stadiums — Dempster stayed in the rotation all year.

The following year, he came into his own, posting a 3.66 ERA in 33 starts. The confidence Boles instilled in him made an enormous impact.

“We were playing in Cincinnati, and it was the bottom of the seventh or eighth inning,” Dempster said, recalling one memorable moment in 2000. “I had about 115 pitches, 120 pitches. Barry Larkin was up. First and second. Two outs. He hit an infield single. Ken Griffey Jr. was on deck. The infield single loads the bases. There was nobody warming up in the bullpen. If that doesn’t give you confidence that your manager believes in you, believes you can get the job done — I ended up getting him out, but that was really just an afterthought. That was Bolesy. That was how he believed in us: ‘You guys are going to find out on your own what you’re made of.’”

It’s been more than a decade since then, and still the confidence remains.

“When you have the confidence from the people behind you, your manager especially, you’re going to have the confidence to go out there and get outs,” he said.

Dempster last saw his old manager two years ago, after a game he pitched in spring training in Arizona. Dempster went up into the stands to sit down with Boles and catch up. It was a thrill for both of them.

Dempster always remained a favorite of Boles — and his son, the manager now charged with the development of Red Sox prospects Matt Barnes, Xander Bogaerts and Anthony Ranaudo.

“Back to the old Marlins days. I remember watching him for the first time when I was a younger guy, just watching the stuff come out of his hand,” said Kevin Boles, whose first managerial job was in the Marlins system, in 2000. “You knew he was going to be really good with the work ethic and his makeup and the way he went after things. I know my father, every time I talk about him, he always smiles because he thinks the world of him.”

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